


Day 6: It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

by Hapkido9061



Series: 25 Cliché Days of Christmas [6]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: ChanBaek - Freeform, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Hospitalization, Hospitals, It is now, Light Angst, M/M, XiuChen - Freeform, becoming friends, is that even a tag?, mention of Lu Han, sehun/jongdae are brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 07:44:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16888461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hapkido9061/pseuds/Hapkido9061
Summary: “Now it’s not going to be any feast of roast duck and glazed ham, but I was taught how to order food with the call button on the left. That, or I can call my brother and make him bring us Chinese take-out.”“Tempting offer. It will mix well with the smell of antiseptics.”Or...Where Minseok slips and breaks his leg on the ice. After meeting his hospital roommate, maybe this is the luckiest break he's had so far.





	Day 6: It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

**Author's Note:**

> 19 days until Christmas and I'm already too stressed from finals to enjoy it... tragic... Maybe EXO's new comeback will help :P

“Hey Baek… yeah, so… can you do something for me?” Minseok asked into his phone. The snow falling from the sky piled up around him in miniature white mountains. It landed on his jeans and soaked through until his legs were shivering from the ice in his bones. But Minseok sucked in a harsh breath as his left leg trembled too hard.

_“What’s up?”_

“Well what are you doing right now?”

_“Me and Chanyeol were just heading out to make it to my parents’ tonight… Why?”_

“Oh, you don’t, you don’t have to then. I know the weather’s supposed to get worse. Make it safely!” Minseok said, trying to muster up encouragement to his friend.

Baekhyun sighed. Rustling could be heard from his end and the faint voice of Chanyeol in the background. Minseok heard a door slamming shut. _“No, seriously, what do you need? We’ve got some time. It’s not like we haven’t been late to Christmas Eve before,”_ Baekhyun laughed. Chanyeol agreed from Baekhyun’s side of the phone call.

“Could you drive me to the ER? I slipped on ice,” Minseok grit out as his leg shifted too much to be comfortable. A wave of pain shot through his body and he had to screw his eyes shut to keep from crying out.

_“Wait! What?! What happened?!”_

“You know how your leg is supposed to be straight? Yeah, it’s not doing that now.”

The sound of a car engine starting filled Minseok’s ear as Baekhyun reassured him they’d be right there. He hoped so, the cold outdoors was getting to be unbearable. By the time they would make it to the hospital, Minseok guessed he’d end up with hypothermia on top of everything. But at least if he gets hypothermia now, the pain from his broken leg would be numbed.

What a way to spend Christmas Eve.

Chanyeol and Baekhyun only lived about seven minutes from Minseok’s house, a short enough distance in nice weather. But the roads were slowly piling up with more snow than the road crews could handle and clear. Besides, most people were already inside their toasty homes with families. How Minseok wished he could be one of them. Snuggling into a warm blanket across from the Christmas tree with a cup of peppermint cocoa and marshmallows sounded like heaven compared to outside in the dark and increasingly cold weather.

Checking the percent on his battery, Minseok decided that he two would be at his house soon enough that an 87% battery would survive a couple games. The first he clicked was some online farm game that hadn’t even been opened in over a year. That lasted for about a minute before Minseok switched over to sudoku. Anything to take his mind off the increasing pain radiating through his leg. He didn’t even want to look down again to see how bad it was.

After what felt like hours, but in truth was only 15 minutes or so, Chanyeol pulled into the snowy driveway. Baekhyun had jumped out of the passenger side before the car was even in park.

“Minseok!”

Baekhyun ran over to his friend with Chanyeol on his heels. They left the car idling, not wanting to waste anytime turning it off and then restarting it only moments later.

“Thank god you left your outdoor lights on,” Chanyeol told Minseok. If not, not only would Minseok be left with a broken leg on his walkway but also in complete darkness. The time was only around five in the evening, but everything grew dark so quickly it felt like it could be ten at night. Baekhyun went up to the front door, dug out his own spare key to Minseok’s house, and unlocked it. He went inside to the warmth as Chanyeol helped Minseok.

When Chanyeol first tried to help Minseok up, the latter hissed in pain; his hand clenched around Chanyeol’s forearm in a death grip. He wasn’t even halfway up to a standing position before he cried out, begging for Chanyeol to set him back down. Looking down at his leg, Chanyeol turned back to Minseok.

Based on how his leg was twisted and the basic knowledge Chanyeol had of medical care from Grey’s Anatomy, he told Minseok how he thinks there’s something screwed up with his knee as well. Probably. Minseok groaned at the thought of how long that would take to heal if it turned out to be correct. And on top of that, it would be during one of the icy winters in the past decade. Just trying to get from place to place would be a challenge.

Baekhyun came back out of Minseok’s house with a bundle of blankets stuffed into his arms. “Just carry him, Channie,” Baekhyun said as he opened the backseat of the car and plopped the blankets on the ground. From underneath them, he had some of Minseok’s clothes that were dry and not soaked through.

Chanyeol tucked his arms underneath Minseok’s legs, minding the broken leg. Minseok had grown quieter the past few minutes, his lips slowly growing more and more pale as he stayed in the cold. As Chanyeol lifted him off the ground, Minseok’s hand flew to the front of his coat to latch onto. The pain had numbed back out to a dull roar in his leg.

“Lay him down….”

–“Get the blanket Baek…”

-“Hurry up and drive…”

-“Sit him up…”

The voices of Chanyeol and Baekhyun were fading into the black that Minseok was met with. He felt something heavy shift over his lap. It took him a moment to realize it was the pile of blankets that Baekhyun had brought. Minseok leaned back further in attempt to find a better position for his leg before realizing his body was already lying in the back seat with Baekhyun supporting him.

Minseok felt as if his eyes closed for only a second before Baekhyun was sliding out of the car from behind him; Chanyeol’s arms soon took the same spot they had before and lifted Minseok up with ease. The nurses inside bustled to and fro between rooms and would pop into the lobby to check on charts from the front desk. It must have been a busy night. Luckily for them, the ER’s waiting room was fairly empty. Everyone being tended to was already in rooms.

 Two nurses from the hallway came to tend to Minseok in an instant. They were ushered into a small room with two beds, but a curtain drawn between the one closest to the door and the one further away. The low murmurs of a doctor and the other patient were soon drowned out by the sound of the main nurse- at least Minseok assumed she was- getting an IV drip ready.

The line was put into Minseok’s arm right after he was covered up by more blankets. Baekhyun could be hear talking quietly with the second nurse and gesturing over to Minseok.

“How’re you feeling?”

Minseok turned his head to face Chanyeol. He mustered up the deepest sigh he could imagine. “Like death.”

Chanyeol laughed lightly. Baekhyun came back over from speaking with the nurse to join them. He drug over one of those hard plastic chairs with sharp corners to the side of Minseok’s bed. “She said the doctor over there will be yours tonight, too. He’ll examine your leg once he’s done with the other guy.”

He nodded at the explanation and sank further into the flat pillows. Whatever the nurse put in the IV must have been working. Minseok felt like his leg wasn’t even connected to his body anymore, but at least the pain was gone. Chanyeol and Baekhyun talked with each other, not trying to get Minseok to respond. He was more thankful than they would’ve believed.

The curtain pulled back halfway until only the other person’s feet could be seen. The sound of the metal scraping against metal of the rings roused Minseok from his light dosing, something that came easy as his body was warmed back to a comfortable temperature. Before coming over to Minseok, the doctor snatched his board off the end of the bed that the nurse had left. His eyes scanned the document quickly.

“So Minseok…” the doctor read off his charts for a second time, setting it back in its place, “this says you slipped on ice outside your house and broke your leg. Is that correct?” Minseok nodded, trying to push himself up to more of a sitting position. Baekhyun and Chanyeol both placed their hands on his back to help.

“I was heading out to my car and slipped on the front step.”

“I see, and these are your friends?”

Minseok nodded a second time. “They’re the ones who helped me get here.” The doctor shook both Chanyeol and Baekhyun’s hands.

“How long were you outside for?”

“A while…”

“I see… I’m just going to have a look at your leg. From what the nurses put and how you’re acting, I want you to stay overnight for observation. Chances are you got mild hypothermia with how long you were in the snow, but nothing serious with that.”

He placed a pair of glasses hanging around his neck onto his nose. The blankets were drawn back from Minseok’s leg but kept over the rest of his body. While the doctor was careful not to jostle or touch any part too hard, Minseok still groaned in pain when he accidently bumped his knee too hard. After looking, the doctor furrowed his eyebrows.

“I’m going to call in an x-ray for you. Be ready in ten minutes or so… this is a fairly serious break. Change out of the clothes you’re in and into a gown please.”

With that, the doctor left the room. Minseok looked to the clock on the wall and saw the time drawing close to six-thirty. “You guys can leave anytime, you know that right?”

“You come first,” Chanyeol told him with a sense of finality.

“It’s Christmas, go see your parents! I’ll be fine alone.” When it didn’t look like either of them were convinced enough to leave, Minseok made a deal. If they helped him into the gown out of the wet (and uncomfortable) clothes, then they could go guilt free. Neither of the two were totally convinced but helped anyways.

He ushered a worried Baekhyun and Chanyeol off, so they could make it to their Christmas Eve dinner before the actual nighttime came around. They both were reluctant to leave, but Minseok assured them he would be fine. Right as a new pair of nurses came into the room to wheel Minseok away, Chanyeol ran back into the room to wish him a ‘Merry Christmas’ with Baekhyun on his heels threatening Minseok that if he didn’t call later that night, they would be back.

Minseok promised only so he wouldn’t have to deal with Baekhyun’s incessant chatter all night long.

The x-ray went smoothly. The only thing Minseok didn’t like was being wheeled around on his bed as if he were on display for everyone. It was understandable though; he couldn’t so much as shift his body more than a couple of inches without pain. When the x-rays were finished, the doctor met up with Minseok as soon as he was back in the room.

“Well, good news and bad news. The good news is you only broke your tibia and nothing’s wrong with the knee like I was suspecting.” The doctor gave a curtesy smile that wasn’t the most cheerful. “The bad news is we’re keeping you overnight to do surgery tomorrow morning. I’ve seen this kind of break many times- the best solution is to pin it.”

Minseok groaned as he fell back onto his pillows. The doctor left the room, telling him that nursed would be popping in and out throughout the night to check on both him and his ‘roommate.’ A second doctor, more of a physician’s assistant if Minseok were to guess, came in and splinted his leg so it wouldn’t become any worse overnight.

Within an hour of arriving, the room quieted out. It was a welcome sound, especially when Minseok felt a headache rising up in his temple. That was, it was silent until a voice asked if he could move the curtain back. When Minseok didn’t respond right away, the curtain flew back on its own. A smirking face met his eyes widened in surprise.

“You sounded cute,” the man said. All Minseok could focus on was how sharp his cheekbones looked and how painful that cast on half his torso looked. “And damn! I was right! You look just as cute as your voice!”

“… thanks?”

The man laughed and sat back onto his own bed, untangling the IV line in his arm as he did. “I’m Jongdae. It’s a pleasure, cutie.”

“Minseok.”

Jongdae shot another smile and kicked his legs up to lay back. “Well Minseok, how’d you end up in the ER during the most wonderful and joyful holiday of the season?”

Said man groped around the bed until he found the button that would raise half the bed to more of a sitting position. Thank god the nurse finally told him how to work it after the x-ray. “Slipped on ice, broke my leg.” He gestured vaguely towards the ugly looking splint on his now bruising leg. Jongdae couldn’t see that under the blankets, though. Minseok was glad that he didn’t have to see how bad it had become.

“No way… I slipped on ice too!” Jongdae exclaimed. He used his right hand to hit the left’s cast as if to emphasize his point. “Messed up my shoulder some, if you can’t tell…” Minseok could tell. The arm was held out in front of Jongdae’s body in a hard plaster and a support running from the bottom of the actual arm down to where his hip would be. The plaster stopped right before the waist and against the juncture where the neck met the collarbone. “I’m gonna need surgery tomorrow, I guess.”

Minseok laughed at that. “This is just a little freaky, same here!”

“Did the doctor say they were going to pin it?”

“Yup!”

“We’re soulmates now. It was destined.”

Jongdae ran over the best he could to Minseok’s bedside and held a hand out for a high-five. Minseok gladly gave it to him, enjoying the other’s enthusiasm a little too much than he felt he should have. Minseok’s stomach growled, reminding him that he had eaten anything since a late breakfast this morning. Jongdae smirked.

“Now it’s not going to be any feast of roast duck and glazed ham, but I was taught how to order food with the call button on the left. That, or I can call my brother and make him bring us Chinese take-out,” Jongdae began after his own stomach growled loudly.

“Tempting offer. It will mix well with the smell of antiseptics.”

Minseok didn’t really want to make Jongdae’s little brother get them food, but hospital food truly was terrible. And besides, if Jongdae was offering, then he probably was already planning on it, right? Rather than answering, he just told Jongdae that he didn’t care for shrimp in his lo mein. Jongdae smirked and pulled his phone off of the bedside table, punching in the numbers.

“Yo Sehun! I need Chinese food,” Jongdae spoke into the phone. Minseok was far enough away that he couldn’t hear what the person on the other line was saying back. “No. I’m telling you you have to. Yes, I realize it’s Christmas Eve.” Silence. “Well tell your dumb boyfriend to stop being such a princess! He can wait in the car or something.” He looked over to Minseok and made an irritated face. Minseok could only laugh at the expression. “I’m older. You have to do as I say.” More speaking from Jongdae’s little brother before he shot Minseok a thumbs up. “Okay, so a chicken lo mein, cashew chicken with broccoli….”

The list of food that Jongdae was ordering seemed endless. He wasn’t sure if they could even eat that much between the two of them, but Jongdae didn’t seem phased. He simply hung up the phone and put it back on the table. Jongdae readjusted the IV line in his arm to go behind his body instead of across the front of it. He flipped on the TV in the corner of the room as they waited for their food to be hand delivered.

Soon enough, in the middle of ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’, a man Minseok assumed to be Jongdae’s younger brother Sehun strolled through the door. He carried an oversized bag in each hand with a bored expression on his face.

“Did Lu come with?”

Sehun tossed the food onto Jongdae’s lap. He hardly even offered Minseok a second glance. “He’s in the car.”

“You guys should come in and eat with us! Spend Christmas with your family!”

“No.” Sehun faked gagged and left the room. Jongdae held his hand over his heart in mock hurt before digging into the bags. “So that was my brother. See, we’re already to the stage of meeting family! Soon enough, we’ll be enjoying our honeymoon on the warm coasts of Fiji.”

Minseok couldn’t help but snort. There was something about Jongdae that had Minseok not really minding the flirting. If anything, he was actually enjoying it slightly. “Well I don’t know if your brother would approve. He didn’t seem to be too happy…”

Jongdae waved a hand. “Nah, he’s just like that. Imagine a stick with a stick up its butt and a stick up that stick’s butt and you’ve got Sehun. And he was even in a good mood today! Didn’t even try to make me pay for this!”

His eyes glanced around the room until he found a table small enough to drag over one handed to Minseok’s bedside. Jongdae made sure that the rack holding his IV bag was close enough that the line wouldn’t get ripped out.

“Don’t break your other arm…” Minseok warned as he hastily shoved the table snug against the side of the bed and picked a chair up to place next to it. “Well then, I’m sure he was a pleasure to grow up with.”

Jongdae snorted before handing up the container of noodles to Minseok. The rest was spread about the table like some feast of the finest delicacies. Which, in all honesty, was. Minseok plowed through his food, the hunger finally coming to him after not having eaten in a while. Jongdae, shockingly, managed to eat all that he had ordered. He offered to share some with Minseok who gladly took any pieces of fried chicken soaked in orange sauce that he was given.

When the two had finally finished eating, licking the last remains of Chinese food from their lips, the nurse for Jongdae returned. She looked surprised at all of the empty containers spread out around Minseok’s bed. Even more, she wasn’t expecting to see Jongdae up and next to Minseok. But based on how he was rubbing uncomfortably at his shoulder, it probably was a bad idea to move around so much with a freshly broken scapula.

The nurse herded Jongdae back into his own bed and cleaned up the mess of food for the both of them. She hooked up a dose of liquid Tylenol into his IV, briefly telling Minseok that another nurse would be in for his next dose as well. Once she left, Jongdae looked to the trashcan and sighed.

“I do feel bad making her clean it up…”

“Same here… but, that was the best Christmas Eve dinner I’ve had in a while,” Minseok supplied with a teasing tone to his voice. Jongdae snorted, soon breaking out into actual laughter.

“Well I’m glad our first date went so well! I was worried you might run to the bathroom and never return. Have a friend call and say their cat died and they need emotional support.”

Minseok blushed, turning his face enough so that Jongdae couldn’t see. “I wouldn’t dine and ditch you. Not without a parting kiss.” Jongdae froze on his bed. Minseok turned to find an unreadable expression on his face. “Jongdae...?”

“Are you serious?”

“What?”

Jongdae cleared his throat, growing slightly shy. His eyes shifted up to the hanging bag filled with a clear liquid, watching it drip at a steady pace. “Are you serious about the kiss?”

Without thinking (Minseok wanted to avoid the ‘overthinking’ part of things), Minseok nodded. “Maybe I am.”

“Well then,” Jongdae said. He let a shy smirk cover his face once again. “The moment this damn Tylenol is done, and I can walk without wanting to pass out from pain, I know what Christmas gift I’ll give you.”

Minseok couldn’t wait.


End file.
